


lodestone

by llassah



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Derek Hale is the Saddest Werewolf, F/M, FBI Agent Stiles, Future Fic, Happy Ending, M/M, Pining, Post Season 3, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-18 05:15:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1416430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/llassah/pseuds/llassah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“We could…we could be something, couldn’t we?” Stiles murmurs, eyes slipping shut. Derek looks at the IV line in his arm, the bandages covering his chest, his leg. His hand, pale against the hospital sheets, palm up. Derek waits until he’s sure Stiles is asleep before he responds.</em>
</p><p>It takes Stiles eight years to ask the question again. It's okay. Derek can wait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lodestone

“We could…we could be something, couldn’t we?” Stiles murmurs, eyes slipping shut. Derek looks at the IV line in his arm, the bandages covering his chest, his leg. His hand, pale against the hospital sheets, palm up. Derek waits until he’s sure Stiles is asleep before he responds.

*

They don’t talk about it again. Through long nights researching, five in the morning phonecalls when things don’t quite feel real enough, nights spent on couches and floors, through necromancers and pack wars, a serial killer who turned out to be an ordinary human with a fondness for knives, through death, resurrection, exams, near breakdowns and nights where neither of them sleep, they don’t talk about it. He doesn’t know if Stiles remembers. Doesn’t know if he made it up.

*

Stiles goes to college, double majors in comparative ethics and folklore, with minors in anthropology and econ. He goes to college and comes back for Thanksgiving with a lovebite on his neck, laughs when Scott comments and says it’s nothing serious. He looks happy, though. Smells happy, when he wraps his arms around Derek and shuffles on the spot, trying to get him to sway in time with the record the Sheriff’s playing. Derek stays completely still, however much Stiles strains. Can’t stop himself from smiling, and he knows he smells happy too.

*

His name’s Darren. He plays the guitar, has hair that’s bleached by the sun, hanging round his face like a shaggy halo. He’s incredibly laid back, just lets Stiles do the talking, watches his hands move like little birds, occasionally nodding when Stiles looks at him, leaning into Stiles during the lulls in conversation. Scott loves him. Derek likes him, too, as much as he likes anyone. He’s good for Stiles. They’re good together. Allison catches his eye across the table, smiles quickly at him. Scott’s looking at a design Kira’s drawn, their heads close together, feet tangled up in each other. He smiles back at her, feels sweetly sad.

He likes it when Stiles is happy, that’s the thing. He likes Darren, and he likes being with them. Stiles reaches over and tries to steal one of his fries. He has his hand clamped around Stiles’s wrist, an inch away from the plate. Darren laughs, tells Stiles to go buy his own, then mouths along to Stiles’s speech on stolen food tasting better, then kisses Stiles quickly when he catches him mid word and starts to protest. Derek shakes his head, feels indulgent, generous. The fry Stiles was going to steal tastes good, and he chews it with his mouth open as Stiles tells him he’s the worst. Darren winks at him. He would love to hate him. He winks back.

*

The next one’s called Carl. They don’t really see him. He hears Stiles talking to him over spring break, voice soft and low. He hears Stiles arguing with him, and sits with him in the loft in the aftermath, as Stiles wishes he was a better person, more patient, and Derek sits and lets him speak, doesn’t interrupt or correct because he’s here to hear the dark parts, the ugliness that Stiles conceals from everyone else. When he’s done talking, Derek gets him a glass of water, a pillow, a blanket. Tells him where the spare toothbrushes are. Sits in the chair facing the couch and watches over him as he sleeps. It feels too familiar.

They stay together for another few weeks, break up quietly. Stiles comes back for his dad’s birthday and doesn’t mention him, is a little quieter but okay. They talk about Scott’s training, Kira’s business. Allison’s criminology degree, Isaac’s budding poetry career. Derek’s started carving again, but he doesn’t talk about that. It’s a secret until he makes something good. Later, when they’ve all eaten and are sitting out in the backyard on blankets, Stiles says “I miss him. It was—some of it was bad, but I still miss him.”

Scott tugs him over and drags his knuckles over his head. “It’s okay, buddy.”

Derek wraps a hand around Stiles’s ankle, strokes the skin just above his foot. Stiles sighs, scent soft and heavy. They stay out all night, end up huddled together, Stiles between them. They wake up to the Sheriff holding a tray with three mugs of coffee and some muffins, shaking his head fondly at them as they blink in the thin morning sunshine. “You kids,” he says, takes the tray back, whistling a snatch of a song his dad used to play on his old record player. Something about winning the heart of a lady.

*

The next one’s called Erin. She comes back with him for a few weeks in summer and when Derek meets her it’s all he can do not to wolf out in a public place. “Fury,” he grits out, his claws digging into his palms. He feels _awful_ , the guilt a hot, tearing force in his chest.

“That’s just—oh,” Scott breathes, grips the back of his neck. “I think you should maybe leave,” he says to Erin, who’s standing there, her clear blue eyes almost glowing.

“I can’t help it,” she says, her voice a pleasant husk. “He—it’s so _much_ ,” and Stiles jerks as if he’s been shot, scrambles back and stares at her. “So much to feed on.”

“I—Erin,” he whispers, pale. “It was the guilt, wasn’t it? Never me.”

She shakes her head, reaches out one hand to touch him. “Sweetheart, it was you, of course it was, but—”

“Please. Please don’t.”

She leaves, and Stiles crumples. He doesn’t get drunk that night. Sits in his bedroom, on the edge of his bed, hands clasped between his legs. “I thought—I thought I was just depressed. It felt familiar. Even when I was with her, and I lo—fuck. I don’t know. I thought it was all me, being broken. I didn’t know why I couldn’t just be—be happy.”

“She did—she liked you,” Derek starts, doesn’t know quite how to explain. “She wasn’t a pure harpy. Must’ve been a few generations back. But it wasn’t just because of the guilt that she liked you. And she—she didn’t hurt you. She could have done worse.”

“That’s…that’s weirdly comforting,” Stiles says. Derek crouches down, waits for Stiles to meet his eyes.

“You’ll be fine,” he says. “There’ll be other people. Better ones.” Stiles looks lost. Soft, a little helpless. Derek doesn’t know quite what to do, tries to ignore the insistent pull of his instincts. He’s relieved beyond words when Scott comes in through the window and just wraps himself around Stiles from behind, nose pressed into the side of his throat.

“You smell weird,” he mumbles. Derek pats Stiles’s shoulder, leaves them to it. He tracks down her scent, follows it to the edge of town, just to make sure she’s gone. He’d howl a challenge if he thought she’d understand it.

*

Jimmy works in a second hand bookshop. Stiles meets him in the fall and they move in together in February. He’s kind, and calm, and helps Derek build his woodcarving website, teaches Scott how to get G7 in tune, seems to actively like the pack visiting at short notice and talks Stiles down from midterms and papers, keeps him fed and alive during the worst of his research binges and he’s just _good._ He’s a good person. They go out for coffee together when Stiles comes home on a weekend visit, get onto the best poets and discover a mutual dislike of poems that rhyme unless they’re sonnets.

Jimmy holds Stiles through his nightmares, supports him through his bouts of insomnia and guilt, gets on fantastically with the Sheriff, teaches Kira sleight of hand magic tricks, finds Allison an seventeenth century book on duelling etiquette and he just _fits_. Derek’s happy for them, truly he is. That old yearning hasn’t gone away though, his quiet devotion. He would die for Stiles, and knows Stiles would do the same. That will never change. He doesn’t want it to. It’s as much a part of him as the tattoo on his back.

They stay together through the spring, through the summer. They’re a couple through pack barbeques, beach parties. Jimmy starts writing a book and Stiles has an existential crisis about his future that ends up with him sitting with his feet dangling over Derek’s balcony, a bottle of Jack in one hand, asking if murderers deserve to be in love, to have careers and Derek has him up against the wall before he can take another breath, angrier than he’s been in a long time and they end up shouting, old wounds reopening because they know exactly how to hurt each other. Always have. Stiles punches him, splits his lip and he allows it, doesn’t do anything back as he goes for another hit, grips onto the fabric of his vest instead, breathing unevenly, Derek’s blood on his knuckles, his eyes bright with tears. “I don’t deserve him,” Stiles says, voice shaking. “I’ll never—I’ll never deserve him.”

“You do,” Derek says. “He loves you. He loves you, and you love him. It’s okay. You deserve love.”

He strokes Stiles’s back as he sags forwards into him, still shaking. They stay out on the balcony until morning.

*

“How come you never date?” Isaac asks, sipping his black coffee and watching Allison smile at Deputy Parrish. He’s back from New York for a brief visit, all coat and unnecessary scarves. He’s wearing fingerless gloves, which made Stiles hiss when he saw them.

Derek shrugs. “I’m fine with how I am. It’s okay. I have enough.”

“You have a loft with half a kitchen, a pot plant you’re incredibly proud of keeping alive, and you carve wooden chairs and little wolves but you only sell the wolves that aren’t quite perfect, and you’ve filled half of your bookshelves with wooden boxes with nothing in them—”

“You write awful poetry and sleep with married women who feed you soup because you wear scarves in summer.”

Isaac looks blank for a few seconds. “It’s a point,” he says at last. “But I’m not pining. And I’m getting considerably more tail than you.”

He salutes Isaac with his coffee mug. “Your poetry’s still awful,” he grumbles but Isaac just laughs.

“I know. It’s terrible. But people still buy my chapbooks. Amazing what a sad story will do for sales.”

Allison and Parrish kiss, go into the Station together. Isaac watches them leave, something a little wistful in his expression. Derek doesn’t comment.

*

A pack in San Francisco kidnaps Jimmy. Stiles tears the city apart to find him, and when he does, he offers them three chances to run. They don’t take them.

“He’s—he’s scared. I think he’s scared of me, of what I did,” Stiles says on the phone a week after. From the echo, he’s in the bathroom. “I think he’s—I think this is it. But, uh, on the plus side McCall said he won’t arrest me if I take the job he’s been creepcruiting me for since sophomore year.”

He goes quiet, and Derek can hear the steady drip of water, the unsteady way Stiles is breathing. “Keep talking,” he says, lying back in bed. “It’s a new department, isn’t it? Our kind of crimes.”

“Yeah. It’s, uh, it sounds like it’s operating from the janitor’s closet on the fifth floor of the main building. Like, no resources really, and they’re totally working in the dark with a lot of it. It’ll be dangerous and we’ve got no regulation and no real jurisdiction, and I—I don’t know if I should be doing this. But, uh, I’m too pretty to go to jail.”

They talk until three in the morning. Derek gets a text the next day complaining that he fell asleep in the bathtub.

*

They break up a week later. Stiles moves out into a one bedroom apartment, buries himself in work. Doesn’t surface for weeks at a time, and they wait for the phonecall, for Stiles to have some kind of crisis, to react to the breakup in some way but he doesn’t, says he’s fine and keeps on saying it. He sails through basic training, and according to Danny fucks his way through half of San Francisco and he keeps saying he’s fine, fine, everything’s good. Derek sends him a carved wolf. One of the perfect ones. Stiles sends him back a picture of an aloe plant, and he has no idea why.

They partner him with McCall. Derek’s pretty sure Scott asked his dad to keep an eye on Stiles, and is also pretty sure he suggested Stiles for the department to his dad two years ago. He’s never asked. They both come to Beacon Hills on a skin trafficking case and Stiles looks worn down, thin around the edges, talks a little too fast. He clings to Scott, and then clings to Derek, the sharp angles of him making Derek want to wrap him up, take him to bed and keep him there, weigh him down so he doesn’t blow away. McCall looks tired, too. When Stiles goes to find his dad, Scott asks him how Stiles has been. McCall sighs. “I’d bench him for a few weeks if I had any issues with his competence, but his work’s exemplary. He just needs reminding to eat and sleep. Hale, you said there had been some extra traffic around one of the warehouses?”

They track the skinstealers down just outside Beacon Hills, take them back the same day. Derek leans against his car and watches them leave, hands in his pockets. Scott comes around to his loft later, still in his EMT uniform, wraps his arms around Derek and tucks his head under Derek’s chin. They stay like that for a long time. “He’ll be okay,” Derek says at last. Scott whines a little.

“He isn’t now,” he says.

It takes a gunshot wound, a fistfight and three screaming arguments, but Stiles starts to get better. He doesn’t talk about Jimmy.

*

Roman’s a sculptor. His large hands are covered in chisel scars. He’s got a permanent exhibition in Paris and is artist in residence at one of the galleries in San Francisco. Stiles invites the pack up to meet him and they go, Parrish calling shotgun and the Sheriff assuming control of the music. They listen to a lot of John Denver, and both Parrish and Allison seem to know most of the words. Scott and Kira create a convoluted game where they substitute the word ‘butt’ for certain lyrics and by the time he gets there he feels a deep and profound sympathy for all parents on car journeys.

They meet at his studio. Stiles is running late, something to do with a merman at a karaoke bar so they introduce themselves and Derek hangs back as everyone else subtly menaces Roman in a variety of ways. Roman mostly looks amused. Stiles rushes in as Kira’s telling him about her anvil, skids to a halt next to Derek and knocks his head against Derek’s shoulder. “How long?” he asks, a hint of a whine in his voice. Derek knuckles his head gently. He smells better than he did. Looks better, too.

“Ten minutes. It’s been a good performance,” he says, laughing softly as Stiles buries his face in his shoulder. “You smell of fish, by the way.”

“You’re the worst. The absolute worst. Is my dad wearing his holster?”

“They all are,” he says, laughs loudly enough to attract the attention of the rest of them at Stiles’s defeated whine. Stiles is engulfed in hugs before he has the chance to say hello. Derek leaves him to the pack’s tender mercies, wanders over to a giant marble shell that’s half carved. Roman comes over, wiping his hands on his apron.

“I’m tempted to leave it like that,” he says, tilting his head to one side. “Hard to know when something’s finished.”

“Sometimes you go over that line,” Derek says, looking across at him. Roman nods with a wry grin.

“That sounds like bitter experience,” he says, one eyebrow raised. “You’re an artist?” Derek shuffles, looks at the sculpture, at the unnervingly delicate carving of a hand on a trestle table nearby.

“Not—no, I’m not,” he says quietly. “These are beautiful. You should—you should leave the shell. It feels like it’s trying to become something. Being born. It looks right that way.”

Roman looks at him like he’s working out which seam to strike to make him fall apart. “You—you’re Derek. You made him that wolf,” he says at last. Derek knows he’s flushing, feels inadequate in this quiet, echoing space, because he’s in love with the man that Roman’s with, has been for years and all he’s given him is a little wooden wolf, running towards the moon, when Roman’s made a perfect sculpture of his hand and can take him to Paris, to Venice, take him to meet writers and artists and kiss him in galleries like that’s the only thing they’re meant to do in them.

“Yes. I carve wood. Little things. Nothing like—nothing like this.”

“It has life. A comforting sort of warmth to it. He keeps it on the nightstand,” Roman says, kisses Stiles on the cheek when he comes over, his father in tow. Derek looks at the shell again, caught between life and marble. Wonders if the wolf makes Stiles feel safer. Kira loops her arm into his, stands on tiptoe and kisses him on the cheek. He can feel the light brush of her tails across his skin, a tingling warmth. Her eyes flash orange briefly and he flashes his in return, a quick, secret exchange.

“Thanks,” he whispers as they walk through the studio. She leans against him, tries to make him walk into a sculpture of a single antler. He’s never taking her to an art gallery.

*

He nearly dies. In fact, he sort of does die, only Scott roars him back to life, back to the bottom of the lake, a spear buried in his side. Kicking up from there is agony, and he has no idea how he gets to shore. He feels like he’s swallowed half the lake, like he can’t even breathe on dry land. It’s raining, thunder rumbling in the distance. He’s at the edge of what he can endure. The mermaids screech from the water, their teeth bared, spears flashing in the lightning. Scott’s wolfed out, eyes glowing. He’s getting closer to managing the full shift. Derek isn’t sure if he realizes how much that means. He pulls out the spear himself, arching up with it as it tears through healed flesh, this dragging agony that seems to go on forever. He lets it drop from his fingers when it’s free, looks up at his alpha as his vision dims so the last thing he sees are eyes glowing red.

When he next wakes up, he’s in bed, and Stiles is in a chair next to him, sprawled with his head tipped back, fast asleep. He’s still in his full suit, and he hasn’t washed for a couple of days. Probably hasn’t eaten either. He looks uncomfortable like that. “He won’t leave,” Scott says, gives him a glass of water. “Sip it,” he says, steadies it with one hand when Derek’s fingers start slipping.

“Why—why do I feel so—” he stops, makes a slightly helpless gesture at himself, at how weak he feels. “It was only a—”

“A poisoned spear. And the inhalation of half a lake,” Stiles says, voice hoarse. He sits up with a groan, closes his eyes briefly. When he opens them again, Derek’s taken aback by how fierce he looks, the grim set of his mouth. He’s about to ask if he’s okay when Stiles scrubs at his hair with his hands, leans forwards. “You’ve been unconscious for three days. Three fucking days, Derek. Lydia called me up in a panic—I thought you were _dead_ , she felt it in _Prague—_ ”

“Stiles,” Scott says, puts a hand on his shoulder.

“You can’t—you can’t do that,” Stiles says, quieter.

“It’s okay. I’m okay, Stiles,” he says, wants to reach out, has his hands stretched out when Stiles just slumps forwards, launches himself half onto the bed and sprawls on top of him, face buried in the crook of his neck. “I had to do it. There wasn’t another way,” and he feels helpless, his side still a little sore, doesn’t know what to say to Stiles as he shakes, as he breathes unsteadily onto Derek’s skin, seems to be struggling with—with so many things.

“I’m really mad at you,” Stiles mutters as he toes off his shoes, flops his legs onto the bed too and starfishes on top of him. “But I also need to sleep,” and he slings a leg over Derek’s, laces their fingers together and slips into something calmer, more relaxed. Derek cards his fingers through Stiles’s hair, feels hopelessly tender, completely lost in it. Scott looks at them both, shakes his head.

“Roman was accepting an honorary professorship last night. Big ceremony, very formal,” he says quietly. “When he heard what had happened, he put Stiles straight in a taxi, paid for it and packed him a bag.”

“He’s a good man.”

Scott nods, gets a blanket from the back of Derek’s couch, puts it over Stiles and smooths a hand over his hair. “He still thinks Stiles is a forensic accountant who gets mugged a lot,” he says. “Stiles still lives in his shitty one bedroom apartment. It’s been six months.”

“Why hasn’t he told him? Surely he’s—it’s serious, right? Stiles is happy with him,” and he feels like a kid asking his parents for reassurance. Roman’s a good man; Stiles should be happy, Stiles should be in love and doing well, and making plans and trusting him with at least some of his burden. He could take it. He’s strong enough, capable of navigating the dangers. “He’s happy,” he says softly. He has to be.

Scott comes around to Derek’s side of the bed, wraps an arm around his shoulders. “He’s happy,” Scott says, and it sounds like he wants to say more. Derek leans against him and closes his eyes. Follows Stiles into sleep.

*

Isaac has a book launch, his first full book of poetry. He sends everyone a scarf with the time, location and date embroidered on it. Derek spends a blissful few minutes imagining how mad Stiles is going to be about the scarf, drapes it over a carving of a pair of boxing hares and hums to himself for the rest of the morning. He's found a tree root, well weathered, with all sorts of good twists and gnarls in it. He can see the beginnings of a little old man, wrinkled and weathered, hunched over, looking up at the sky. He feels like he's just...letting the carving happen, working with the grain of the wood, the slight warping, the way it yields to his claws in some places. It's a good day.

They fly to New York. Derek tries to sleep, tries not to think about the city and what it means to him, the partial sanctuary it used to represent. He's talked to Cora about Laura a lot recently, late night phone conversations, piecing together the scraps of memory she has with his, mingling the heroic older sister with his Alpha, scared but doing her best, wounded and brave and kinder than he deserved. They were happy here. They found a way to be happy, in their own way. He wakes up with his fingers tangled with Stiles’s, the cobwebs of the dream leaving him unsettled, a little sad. Stiles strokes his thumb over his knuckles, a steady pulse. He breathes in time.

Stiles has come alone. When he asks about Roman, when they’re at the bookshop, Stiles shrugs. "We...we didn't work out," he says, but he doesn't seem sad, not like the hollowed out wreck he was with Jimmy. "It was great while we had it, though," and he snags a glass of champagne

"What happened?"

Stiles ducks his head, grins. "They wanted him to spend a year at the Sorbonne, and he asked me if I could maybe find a job at an accounting firm there and it was like— it was like a brick in a sock to the back of the head. Like, he still thinks I'm an accountant. We were out to dinner with friends a few months ago and he turned to me and asked me to figure out the bill— like, 'it's fine, Stiles is the one with the brains in this couple.' You've seen me do math under pressure."

Derek grins, coughs to hide his laugh. "You're not too bad," he says, and they both know it's a kind lie.

" _Anyway_ , I ended up panicking and said 'it's fine, I got a raise, this one's all on me.' I didn't eat for, like, a week, after I'd paid for that. I just...I think I'm done with lying,"

He looks tired suddenly, but he smiles when he sees Derek's looking at him. "I'm never honest with them. It gets tiring." He looks out into the room, at Isaac talking animatedly to a girl in a pinafore dress, then looks across at Derek again. "How do you, you know, date?"

Derek looks down at his feet, clears his throat. He can't quite talk around this very well. "I haven't. Not really."

Stiles blows out a long breath, bounces on the balls of his feet a few times. "How long?" he asks, his voice careful. Derek keeps watching the room.

"Since Jennifer," he says. He wants to get out, get some air. Stays still.

"Eight years. That's like— man. Derek. Why? Aren’t you—are you lonely?"

"It's fine," he says, and it is. It's fine. "Let's go find Isaac. Have you read any of his poems yet?" Stiles shrugs. Everyone buys a copy of each of Isaac's books whenever he publishes. Scott reads them once, then tells everyone he knows how amazing Isaac is, Stiles pretends he doesn't read them at all but the spines on them are all creased and there are little bookmarks in them. Derek reads them when he's tired, late at night. Sits at his window with a cup of tea, sweetened with honey. He rations himself. Some of the poems are awful, a lot of them in fact, but there are a few, scattered here and there that catch at his heart. They go and buy a copy each, find a quiet corner and lean against the wall next to each other. They're both terrible at this kind of party. They hover at the fringes, watching for danger. 

Stiles has opened his to a random page, reads quickly through, lips moving as he sounds the words out. He turns to another, then another. His pulse is a little elevated, something joyful in his scent. "These are all— he's actually worked at these," he says, and Derek strokes his fingers down the cover of his own copy. "They're— they're something." 

Isaac stands up on a chair, taps his glass. He's flushed, eyes sparkling. Someone's slipped him some wolfbrew and he sways a little as the room gradually quietens. He's smiling, the kind of smile that makes Derek think of the full moon. "I am unworthy," he says, bows like a puppet with its strings cut. "You are all kinder than this poor poet deserves. Many of you are here because you have paid a good deal of money to be here. Some of you are here because I love you dearly, and have written many of my best words about your place in my heart. The rest of you are called Stiles Stilinski." Stiles snarls next to him. Derek puts his hand on the back of his neck, squeezes once and Stiles subsides. 

"Let him be an idiot, just for now," he murmurs. "You can arrest him later."

He wants to keep his nose there, near to Stiles's ear, the delicate skin of his throat. Just stay with him as voices rise and fall and people laugh, as life happens around them. He lifts his head to listen to the rest of Isaac’s speech, watches the room. Stiles goes over to Scott and Kira when it’s over and Derek just leans against the wall, lets everything wash over him. The book’s in his pocket. He’ll read it later. Take his time.

Isaac finds him as the first people are starting to leave. “I wouldn’t have this without you,” he says, leans into him a little. “Without—fuck. I shouldn’t have drunk so much. My tongue feels thick. I didn’t know that happened. But you get to a place where—where the bad stuff feels like it was just a part of the journey. Like, it hurt, but it got you somewhere. I got somewhere. We all did.”

Stiles is balancing three champagne flutes on top of each other and attempting to balance a fourth as Scott commentates into a potted plant. Allison and Kira are standing either side of a terrified looking man in a fedora with identical sinister smiles. They got somewhere. “I’m proud of you,” he says. “And I like your scarf.”

“I may cry,” Isaac says, wanders off, aimless.

Later, in his hotel room, he sits in the armchair facing the window, the lamp on the desk set to a low glow. He’s too jetlagged to sleep, gets Isaac’s book from the nightstand instead. He starts at the beginning, skips the dedications, just goes to the first poem. It’s a sonnet, written sparely. There’s a grit to it, something percussive in the meter. Stiles is right. It’s _good._ Not just in flashes, either. There’s a certain truth to each poem, something said exactly right. There are glimpses of the pack, hovering in the margins. There’s Allison, always Allison. Scott, too. Thunder for Kira. Stiles, too, a bright and flickering presence. He can’t find himself here. Not at first.

There’s a poem on page 64. One of the shortest in the book, just a single stanza. It’s called _lodestone_. He reads it once, then again, mouthing the words to himself: _you are not my true north; / I take a winding/ road to reach your side. / but where you are/ is home._ He sighs, lets his head drop back. Shortest poem in the book. That’s him. He leaves the book open on his lap, looks out of the window at the city, breathes. He almost wishes Isaac had—this feels cruel. He’s been laid bare, bones shining through flesh.

He doesn’t sleep. Stays still and quiet, fingers tracing the words every so often. Not his true north, but home all the same. He waits for the sun to rise, for the gray of the dawn, for the birds and the cars, a city lurching to life. Five AM. Past the hours of the witch and the wolf. Downhill to the day.

He’s rereading the poem when there’s a knock, gentle on the doorframe. He sets the book down on the bed, pads over to open the door. Stiles is still in his shirtsleeves, hair up at all angles. “You never—at the hospital. Years ago. I asked you—I asked you something. You never answered me,” he says, voice husky. Derek leans against the doorframe.

“I did,” he says. Stiles frowns.

“I would have—”

“You were asleep,” he says, steps back to let Stiles in, closes the door behind him. “I thought you’d forgotten. You—you were happy. You didn’t need my answer.”

“Eight years, Derek. Eight years! It’s been—all this time, Derek, and it’s been—” Stiles paces, hands tugging at his hair, all energy, sparks and danger. Derek brushes a hand against the book.

“Ask me again,” he says. This thin light makes everything unreal. Stiles’s eyes are a dull gold color, skin pale, hair dark. He’s always been the most beautiful person Derek’s ever seen. “Ask me.”

“Could we be something?” Stiles asks softly. He’s gone still again. He’s standing in front of Derek, feet bare, shirt crumpled. He’s tired, dark circles under his eyes, hair a little greasy from being tugged at. “Tell me what you said to me, when I was asleep. Tell me why you didn’t say it again.”

“I love you. And I’m scared,” he says. Stiles’s heartbeat stays steady, his scent calm, his smile utterly familiar. He’s never smiled at anyone else like that, and Derek’s starting to realize why, with this helpless, giddy joy. He takes a step closer, ducks his head and presses his nose to the side of Stiles’s neck, closes his eyes. It feels like coming home.


End file.
